I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the design of an improved animal trap, and more specifically to a design which permits simplicity of manufacture, reliability, ease and safety of operation, and sanitary handling of trapped animal bodies.
II. Description of the Prior Art
The art of animal traps is old and includes many designs that may generally be divided into two broad categories including traps that physically maim or kill the animal, such as the well-known spring-loaded snap trap, and traps that capture the animal within an enclosure. Some of the enclosure traps provide an airtight enclosure in which the animal dies by asphyxiation.
The familiar spring-loaded snap trap has achieved commercial success because of its low cost, but it presents several serious disadvantages, including the possibility of injury to the user in setting the trap, or to small children and household pets who may trigger the trap accidentally. In addition such traps are unsanitary and offensive to dispose of, to a degree that makes them wholly unsuitable for many consumers and for many commercial applications including food-handling establishments and health facilities.
The enclosure traps of the prior art generally overcome these disadvantages of the spring-loaded snap traps, but the relative complexity of the enclosure traps, and their resultant high cost, have limited their usefulness and success. Recent enclosure traps for example as disclosed in Spiller U.S. Pat. No. 4,550,523 and in Melton U.S. Pat. No. 4,578,892 employ fewer and simpler components than older enclosure traps. These more recent traps have been designed to use, in lieu of the spring or trip driven door-closing mechanisms of earlier enclosure traps, the weight of a rodent moving across the fulcrum of a tiltable enclosure, to tilt the enclosure in a manner that causes a door member biased in an upwardly open position to fall of its own weight across the opening of the enclosure.
However the traps disclosed in Spiller and Melton have the disadvantages that they may be prematurely sprung for example by mice climbing onto the top surface of the tiltable enclosure in the course of investigating the trap, and that the complex configurations of the door members of the Spiller and Melton traps present manufacturing difficulties and thus expense. Animal traps of the present invention are considered to be a substantial advance and improvement in overcoming these disadvantages.